Ah, January. No one’s favorite, is it? I love the turning of the year and the idea of a fresh start, but this year I must admit that I have just felt so…tired. Maybe it’s the lack of sunlight. Maybe it’s my body tapping into an ancient rhythm of hibernation. Maybe it’s the ongoing anguish of war and terrorism that I feel so powerless to stop. Maybe it’s all of the above.
My grandmother, whom we called Nanny, was a prolific writer. She published a book and wrote a fictionalized account of her ancestors arriving in Texas from Moravia. She always kept a journal, and when she wasn’t in the kitchen, her nose was in a book. She never arrived to visit us without individual treats for everyone according to their preferences, along with several grocery bags full of books for my mom, whom she called Miss Mar’ Beth.
Every time I go home to Memphis, I look through some little snippets of her journal that she typed up. When writing became too arduous, she recorded herself speaking. She hated January too. Nanny was a pastor’s wife all her life. She loved the celebration of Christmas. January, with its dim light and dry pine needles, must have felt flat to her after all the feasts and gatherings.
But onward we go, don’t we? I’ve been thinking about rest, about the way the natural world takes a pause in these months, slows down. I’ve been thinking about how humans used to as well. Before electric light, we slept longer in the winter, the moon tucking us in at night. We were less ambitious in these cold months, the sun simply giving us fewer hours to work with.
I don’t mean to glorify the past too uncritically—I am very much a fan of things like heating and plumbing and modern medicine and civil rights. But I think I mourn a bit more each year what has been lost in the Januarys of our hyper-digital, productivity-obsessed American life (I do recognize the irony of typing this in…a digital format.)
What I’m trying to do, in spite of the need to keep going in our typical American way, is to see January as an invitation to what in the gospel is called eremos. It’s translated all kinds of different ways, from wilderness to desert to my personal favorite, desolate place.
Eremos is where John the Baptist lived on locusts and wild honey. It’s where Jesus was tempted for forty days. But it’s also where Jesus was always inviting the disciples to rest. Where he went to pray on his own.
It’s a desolate place, sure. But that doesn’t mean it’s a place of desolation. Maybe January is exactly the eremos we need. Short days. Bare branches. The silence of the natural world.
This kind of stripping down, especially after the hubbub of the Christmas season, reminds me of kenosis, the self-emptying that allows us to be filled with the goodness of God.
I’m hoping that’s where I’ll find myself this January. Where we’ll find ourselves. Huddled up in darkness and what seems like emptiness, only to realize we are being filled. Nourished. Warmed.
A Few Hopeful Things
—I’m having a blast with my students in the Ignatian Russian lit course, and in case any of you are reading this, thank you so much for your wonderful insights and inspiring writing, and sorry for assigning you “Kholstomer,” which is definitely one of the weirdest things Tolstoy ever wrote! (This class is full, but I do hope we will offer it again in the future.)
—I’d be remiss, in a newsletter about rest, if I didn’t mention the great gift to humanity that is Tricia Hersey’s Rest Is Resistance. Have you read it?! If not, get thee to the library. It will fuel you for the never-ending work of affirming your own value and self-worth outside of the framework of capitalism.
—For those of you biting your nails and staring down the blank page/canvas/editing software/new year’s resolutions, I wrote this for us over at Jesuit Media Lab. Keep going.
Seeking eremos with you,
Cameron
Excellent piece with valuable insight as usual. Thank you! You might be interested in knowing that wilderness or desert, as it may be alternately translated from the Hebrew Bible, is BeMidbar, which literally means, “In the speaking,” or contextually, “I’m the place of the Lord’s speaking.” So, how right you are about the refreshing, recharging, renewing power of the desert or wilderness. Thanks, again, Cameron!